Will and effects loop help with signal loss?

[Gaz]

I have a friend whose running a gillion pedals n front of his amp, and is loosing a lot of signal. Excuse the dumb question, but would a tube buffered effects loop help his situation?

[Reeltarded]

Pedals aren't for loops. He needs buffers between pedals. You transform the signal at most every stage along the way. Look up the pedal section of a Bradshaw rig and wrap your head around that.

There are a bunch of modern variations on loops previous to the amp. I don't know of any names, but I see them all the time.

[Gaz]

What do you mean, 'pedals are for loops?' Surely a low impedance buffered loop can be designed to accommodate pedals, no?

You transform the signal at most every stage along the way. Look up the pedal section of a Bradshaw rig and wrap your head around that.

There are a bunch of modern variations on loops previous to the amp.

I also don't really understand what you mean by these comments, but I really want to! Thanks for the response, nonetheless.

[M Fowler]

I have a friend whose running a gillion pedals n front of his amp, and is loosing a lot of signal. Excuse the dumb question, but would a tube buffered effects loop help his situation?

It really depends on the age and type of pedals being used here. A wah wah pedal usually first in signal really such tone in my experience.

Old pedals can be problematic in their own right so need to address each pedal. Boss pedals are usually already buffered. It takes a lot of experimenting with the signal chain to know what works well together. Surely your friend does need all those pedals hooked up at one time.

[Gaz]

Well, he uses a Digitech Whammy (new), a Line 6 DL4, an another one of those Line 6 pedals, and a couple others (I think a looping station). He uses them mainly for noise stuff. He says almost none of his pedals are true-bypass. All he knows is that his signal loss is becoming pretty apparent, and he wants more pedals

I'm personally a guitar->tuner->amp guy, so I really don't know much about the topic. He wanted to know if adding a buffered loop would help him.

It seems like after doing a little research that a buffer may help, but that probably needs some sort of "looper" pedal either way to bypass all the sucking effects when not in use.

[M Fowler]

I would say your correct that he needs a buffer and bypass those pedals.

[Structo]

Another thing you can do is use a master loop pedal like Loopmaster.

Then you leave all the pedals on and switch them in and out via the true bypass looper.

You can also build your own if you feel up to the challenge.

To fix what he has, you can use a Boss pedal in front and one at the end.
Most if not all Boss pedals are buffered, be they on or off.

You can also build simple opamp buffers to keep unity to the input.
General guitar gadgets sells a JFET buffer that is simple to build.

You can add more stages to this looper by copying the preceeding circuit.

[yowza]

Some pedals should go in front of the amp and some in the effects loop.
I put anything like a wah wah, filter, compressor, gain, boost, distortion, overdrive etc directly into the front of the amp. I use a buffer in this part of the signal chain too usually a MXR 410 (?) boost/line driver. Time based effects like delay, chorus, mod and pitch go in the effects loop. IMO it's much cleaner this way.

YMMV because it depends a lot on the type of amp you are using and whether the guitar sound is coming from the preamp or the power section of the amp which might not work with an effects loop. If the guitar sound is coming from more from the power amp then you might want to put a line out on the amp and use a dry/wet setup for the time based effects with another amp, but I'd still put the boost, gain pedals into the front of the amp. This does mean you'd have to take another amp

I hope this helps!!

[Reeltarded]

Another thing you can do is use a master loop pedal like Loopmaster.

That sounds like what I am talking about. A looping rig before the amp. This is what the front end Bradshaw thing used to do, but the pedals are generally remote, except for like a wha or anything you'd have real-time control over.

[Gaz]

Gotcha. Thanks for all the suggestions - I'm slowly starting to piece this together. I initially thought the problem was simpler.

P.S. pedals are stoopid.

[d95err]

Buffers may be useful if you have vintage pedals (no buffer, not true bypass) or a lot of true bypass pedals. Modern non-true bypass pedals are already buffered, so additional buffers would add nothing but noise.

A true bypass loop box that makes sure only the active pedals are in the signal chain would probably help. Putting the delays and looper in an effect loop would also be a good idea.

[husky]

I have a friend whose running a gillion pedals n front of his amp, and is loosing a lot of signal. Excuse the dumb question, but would a tube buffered effects loop help his situation?

He should make sure he has a buffer at the beginning and at the end of his chain of the pedal board, especially if he has a lot of true bypass pedals. There is a lot of cable capacitance in the cabling and the pedals so making sure you are buffered will bring back highs and level. If he has pedals that can handle line level and are time based like reverbs and delays only they can go in the loop. You could do an instrument level loop as well but I would recommend a mixer for retaining quality and signal to noise ration. Line level is always best, Eventide pedals are great for that. really all depends on the amp and the pedals being used. A quality buffer will add no noise.